Midle Age (2022)

A golden age is brought to life for us by sixty1strings on their new GENUIN album. Their unique instrumentation of mandolin, harp and guitar presents a thrilling programme of baroque music from Spain, Italy and France. Konstanze Kuß (Spanish baroque harp), Ekaterina Solovey (baroque mandolin) and Negin Habibi (baroque guitar) plunge into the sensual compositions by Antonio Vivaldi, Marin Marais and Domenico Scarlatti with enthusiasm and panache. Both original compositions and arrangements are performed, and the mandolin serves as a full-fledged, silvery-singing substitute for a diva in a hoop skirt and wig…

This collection spotlights six legendary pianist-composers from the 19th and 20th centuries. Adolf von Henselt’s ferocious technical studies and Romantic salon pieces led Schumann to dub him ‘the Chopin of the North’. Polish virtuoso Ignaz Friedman’s works offer delightful melodic beauty and harmonic inventiveness set alongside works by his countryman, Józef Hofmann, renowned as a poet of the keyboard. The French master musician Alfred Cortot is represented here with a selection of stylish piano arrangements of works by great composers. As one of Finland’s most respected musicians during the early 20th century, Selim Palmgren displays a wide variety of technical and stylistic challenges with music that is both traditional and visionary; while music by the exiled Russian composer Nikolay Medtner is highly Romantic and spiritually charged. These six towering superstars represent the summit of the piano’s Romantic golden age, heard here in critically acclaimed performances by award-winning pianists.